Why I'm Not Writing

1. At the store where I work, a customer sneezed all over my hands as I was giving her the change from her purchase. Now I can't stop sneezing.

2. Since I can't afford to take a sick day, I've been going to work and trying not to sneeze or cough on the other customers. I feel tempted to sneeze on a couple of the supervisors though, because they claim that the A/C in the store can't be fixed. It is extremely warm in the store and several customers have asked me if I'm going to pass out.

3. I think I might have accidentally mixed up my nighttime cold medicine with the daytime medicine, which might explain why I keep falling asleep on my laptop.

4. I thought about giving up TV for a week so that I'd have more time to write. I figured if I could survive a TV-free week, maybe I could cancel my cable and save money, even though I don't subscribe to extra cable channels or Netflix. But then when I went to sleep I kept dreaming of all the shows I was missing. (Side note: Jerry Seinfeld is kind of scary when you dream about him. Or at least he is when I dream about him.)

5. I considered rejoining okcupid, but I couldn't stop wondering if there's a way to loser-proof my profile.

6. I have to complete a draft of my dissertation, and I'm supposed to do a lot more research. But the only thing I feel like reading is People, which may be one of the reasons that my brain is not fully functioning right now.

7. I keep muttering "Murf" to myself when I'm at work, because one particularly stressful day I thought, I could kick a Smurf right now. (Side note: No Smurfs were hurt before, during, or after the writing of this post.)

8. I've been combing through the job ads to see if I can find something better than my current retail job. It turns out that there are a lot of (ahem) interesting characters on Craigslist, including one guy who wants to hire someone to spy on his wife because he thinks she's cheating on him, someone who wants a personal assistant who is "easy on the eyes", and a business owner who described himself as rich and good-looking and was looking for an "open-minded" receptionist.

9. I thought about starting my own Twitter page, but then I figured that most people aren't going to be interested in Tweets like "I managed not to yell at any drivers who were talking on their cell phones today" or "Would it be wrong to jump into tourists' pictures to make them stop blocking my way on the sidewalk?"

10. I keep wondering why two of my favorite shows, Law and Order and Law and Order: Criminal Intent, got cancelled but shows like Storage Wars were renewed and the Kardashians keep getting spinoffs.

But then I think about what my life would be like if I stopped writing altogether and how much I'd miss writing. I think about how I'd continue to feel the urge to grab my journal and a pen every time I saw/thought/heard/felt something weird, funny, or interesting. I think about all the characters I created who have become real to me and how I have to keep writing their stories so that I can find out what happens to them.

What about you? When you have writer's block, what are the reasons why?